Bobby Cannavale (left) and Chris Rock in a scene from the 2011 Broadway production of "The ----- With the Hat." Cygnet Theatre has announced it will stage the San Diego premiere of the Stephen Adly Guirgis play as part of its 2013-14 season.— AP /Boneau/Bryan-Brown, Joan Marcus

Bobby Cannavale (left) and Chris Rock in a scene from the 2011 Broadway production of "The ----- With the Hat." Cygnet Theatre has announced it will stage the San Diego premiere of the Stephen Adly Guirgis play as part of its 2013-14 season.
/ AP /Boneau/Bryan-Brown, Joan Marcus

NEW YORK 
Drug addiction, religion, the Iraq war, class warfare and marital sacrifice - it's been a grim season on Broadway. But not for the playwrights.

From "Good People" to "Ghetto Klown" to "Lombardi," it was a bumper year for dramatic writers. Of the 25 plays that made it to Broadway for the 2010-2011 season, a robust 14 productions were new.

"Broadway is just really full up this year with people expressing their vision," says Lynne Meadow, artistic director of Manhattan Theater Club. "And what a range! What a range of plays we have."

The works each took different paths to Broadway. Some had star celebrities, such as Robin Williams in "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo." Some had extensive out-of-town tryouts before arriving, such as "High." And some opened cold on Broadway - John Guare's "A Free Man of Color."

At next month's Tony Awards, two American works will battle two British imports for top play honors when "Jerusalem" and "War Horse" vie against David Lindsay-Abaire's "Good People" and Broadway debutante Stephen Adly Guirgis' "The Motherf---- With the Hat," a tale about drug addiction starring Chris Rock.

"Playwrights have access to Broadway in a way they never had before," says Lindsay-Abaire, whose play starring Frances McDormand and Tate Donovan explores class tensions in Boston. "I think it helps that there are brave producers that are taking chances."

The relative glut of plays - two consecutive seasons of 14 new plays - comes as a new generation of theatrical thirtysomethings emerges, including directors Alex Timbers ("The Pee-wee Herman Show" and "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson") and Thomas Kail ("Lombardi"), and playwright Rajiv Joseph, who made a splash this season with his "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo."

"It seems like there are a lot of people my age - playwrights and directors - who are doing great work. And it seems like theaters are entrusting them," said Joseph, who credits older American playwrights such as Lynne Nottage and Guirgis for inspiring him.

Much of the good new works has been the result of nurturing by such groups as the Manhattan Theater Club, LAByrinth Theater Company, Second Stage Theatre, Playwrights Horizon, the Lark Play Development Center and the Atlantic Theater Company.

The Manhattan Theater Club has made a point of championing playwrights and "Good People" is the fifth Lindsay-Abaire play it has produced. Other writers it has backed include Terrence McNally, Donald Margulies, John Patrick Shanley and Beth Henley. This season it produced Matthew Lopez's well received New York debut "The Whipping Man," off-Broadway.

"When the support is there and when the commitment is there, then the work follows and the work gets better and better. And I think that's what we're seeing now," says Meadow. "I think there's a tremendous amount of wonderful writing that's happening now in the theater."

Joseph credits the Lark for helping him shape his well-regarded Broadway debut. Founded in 1994 as a laboratory for new voices, the Lark arranges for readings, mounts bare-boned productions and even takes the playwright abroad to see their works performed in other languages.